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Wed. Nov 05, 2003

Phase IV, AWOL

Phase IV, AWOL – There’s a very long article in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine that I finally got around to finishing last night. Even if you fully support our efforts in Iraq, perhaps especially then, you owe it to yourself to spend the time to read it all. Even though I don’t agree with all of the ”numbered points” it makes, it’s well worth the effort.

But if you could sum up a ten page piece in a one sentence quote, this would be it: ”As much as the invasion of Iraq and the rout of Saddam Hussein and his army was a triumph of planning and implementation, the mess that is postwar Iraq is a failure of planning and implementation.”

An after-action report from the 3rd Infantry Division spells out the four phase plan for operations, with the first three phases containing the military plan for invasion, and Phase IV being ”post-Saddam,” i.e., after Baghdad was captured and the regime fell. The report emphasizes that the great success the division had in the invasion (Phases I-III) was due to the extensive training and practice of the detailed plan, much of it accomplished on the training fields of Fort Stewart.

Then it details the stark contrast that was ”Phase IV”:

”Higher headquarters did not provide the Third Infantry Division (Mechanized) with a plan for Phase IV. As a result, Third Infantry Division transitioned into Phase IV in the absence of guidance.”

”The report concludes that ’division planners should have drafted detailed plans on Phase IV operations that would have allowed it’—the Third Infantry Division—’to operate independently outside of guidance from higher headquarters. Critical requirements should have been identified prior to’ the beginning of the war, the report states. The division also should have had ’a plan to execute’ a stability-and-support operation ’for at least 30 days.’”

”The report says that such an operation should have included ’protecting infrastructure, historic sites, administrative buildings, cultural sites, financial institutions, judicial/legal sites and religious sites.’ It notes, with hindsight, that ’protecting these sites must be planned for early in the planning process.’ But as the report makes clear, no such planning took place.”

I started asking the question back in May, Where was the plan? I even said, ”Let’s all be thankful the invasion itself wasn’t run at this level of efficiency.” And now I have my answer, confirmed by the first folks to face the transition from war to ”occupation,” the 3rd ID.

At the division level where it would first be implemented, there was no plan.

None.

This wasn’t a case of unexpected developments when the regime fell, or misjudgements about what might happen then, or misapplied assets. This was a complete absence of planning, at the level it would first be applied, coming immediately after executing a detailed and well practiced plan for invasion. At the most basic level, this was a failure to insure strategic success after tactical victory had been won.

It is as though a playwright had invested great time and energy in writing and rehearsing the critical first three acts of a four act play, yet sent the actors out on the stage with no script at all for Act Four.

The phrase ”unconscionable malpractice” comes to mind, but it wasn’t committed by the 3rd ID, that’s for sure. They did the best they could ”in the absence of guidance.”